Jean Renoir is quite rightly remembered as one of the greatest directors of all time, having been responsible for the likes of La Grande Illusion and La Regle du Jeu, two movies that regularly feature highly on many 'greatest films of all time' lists. His most popular films were made in the 1930s, before the outbreak of World War II, and before he fled to Hollywood when France fell to the Nazis. After struggling to find any projects that suited him in the U.S., Renoir eventually returned to his native country where he started work on a project seemingly out of his comfort zone: a trilogy of bright and bouncing musical comedies. These films were The Golden Coach, Elena and Her Men, and, sandwiched between them, French Cancan.
French Cancan is filmed deliberately to evoke the paintings of the great Impressionist painters, including Renoir's own father, Pierre-Auguste. Set in 1980s Paris, this is the (fictional) origin of the Moulin Rouge, and, like Baz Luhrmann's spectacular Moulin Rouge! released 46 years later, the tale is told with elements of fantasy and lashings of colour. With his failing cafe about to fall in the hands of the creditors, the womanising Henri Danglard (Jean Gabin) hatches a plan whilst out one night in Montmartre with his rich colleagues and belly-dancing mistress Lola (Maria Felix). He will bring back the cancan, re-naming it the 'French Cancan' in order to sound more exotic to visiting Russian and American sailors. He eyes the beautiful Nini (Francoise Arnoul) and offers to pay for her to have dance lessons, enraging her jealous boyfriend. With chaos growing all around him, Danglard calmly tries to hold it all together in time for the big opening night.
Clearly indulging his love for theatre, Renoir really goes for broke with French Cancan, infusing the many love triangles and business arrangements going on with a bawdy, almost slapstick quality. Jean Gabin, the terrific actor Renoir employed on a number of occasions, manages to express so much by doing so little, and always with a sly grin on his face. It is a far better performance than is even required for such a character, and he offers an extra dimension to the work-horse who cares as much about putting on a dazzling, memorable show as he does for the leggy girls he employs. The titular dance at the climax is as eye-catching and fantastical as anything produced by Hollywood during the genre's Golden Age, and perhaps this was something Renoir picked up from his time there. Of the musical trilogy, French Cancan was the only hit, and it isn't difficult to see why this whimsical re-telling of the origin of one of the most iconic locations of its time struck such a chord with audiences at the time.
Picking up immediately where the events of the first film left us, Maniac Cop 2 is one of those rare examples of a sequel surpassing its predecessor in almost every way. Of course, this is hardly The Godfather Part II or Toy Story 2,but, with an increased budget and B-movie maestro Larry Cohen back on writing duties, director William Lustig pulls out all the stops to deliver a hugely entertaining, if formulaic, slasher follow-up. Jack (Bruce Campbell) and Teresa (Laurene Landon) are also back, although they don't last very long, as we are replayed the climax of Maniac Cop, where the seemingly bullet-proof psychopathic ex-cop Matt Cordell (Robert Z'Dar) was last seen in the driver's seat of a van heading straight into the sea.
Naturally, Cordell's body is nowhere to be found and he is soon spreading terror once again across New York City, gunning down an innocent convenience store clerk who was in the process of being robbed. Deputy Police Commissioner Edward Doyle (Michael Lerner) doesn't believe Jack and Teresa's wild claims of the disgraced and heavily-scarred former officer returning from the dead, until they are both brutally murdered and the body count starts to rise once again. Enter tough, chain-smoking detective Sean McKinney (Robert Davi), who is currently undergoing psychiatric evaluation by Susan Riley (Claudia Christian) following the suspicious death of a criminal he was hunting. Meanwhile, serial killer Steven Turkell (Leo Rossi) is murdering strippers. His path soon crosses with the vengeful Cordell, and the two become unlikely roommates.
Maniac Cop 2 offers little in the way of originality. If you've ever seen a slasher film, then you'll likely be able to guess most of what happens next in the story, although it does throw in the surprise of killing off its previous two main characters without batting an eyelid. What it does offer, however, is a number of memorable set-pieces, including a woman handcuffed to the wheel of a moving car whilst she is outside of it, and a pretty astonishing climax involving a prison rampage and a full body burn, which looks as though it must have been tricky to film. Larry Cohen also writes the characters with his trademark quirkiness, with Lerner in particular appearing to be having a blast, and Davi providing a more compelling leading man than Campbell. There is still no explanation to what exactly granted Cordell his superhuman powers, but we are given more insight into his background, despite his rather odd friendship with a scumbag you expect to see hacked apart within seconds of appearing on screen. Maniac Cop 2 offers way more than is expected of a sequel to an 80's slasher.
A few years ago, after the Shia LaBeouf-starring Transformers trilogy came to a close with Dark of the Moon, Michael Bay made the welcome announcement that he was to leave the franchise he'd been working on day-in day-out for the past 5 years, causing critics - and film buffs forcing themselves to endure such cinematic waste - to rejoice in the process. This, of course, wasn't true, as he came back to the series to helm Age of Extinction in 2014, this time starring the considerably buffer frame of Mark Wahlberg. I don't remember much of what happened - other than incoherent special effects bashing each other and blowing things up - but there was certainly no extinction, and whatever happened in that film inspired Bay to explore new stories in the Transformers universe. And so here we are with number five - The Last Knight.
He's tricked us before into believing that we were finally moving into a world free of Bay's Transformers movies, so there's no reason to believe his new claims that The Last Knight will indeed be his last foray into the stories of the Autobots and Decepticons (although its always been much more about the humans). There's a Bumblebee spin-off starring Hailee Steinfeld already shooting, and the climax here certainly leads us to believe that there's even more to come. The Last Knight runs at a whopping 149 minutes (which is actually one of the shortest in the series), and every one of those minutes feels like a lifetime as Bay amps up everything the majority of people have come to hate about the franchise. Huge planets are smashed into each other, characters share awkward and painfully unfunny banter, and the camera leers so much at the franchise's latest hotty (a professor who dresses like a stripper played by Laura Haddock) that you almost long for the acting talents of Megan Fox.
Wahlberg returns as Cade Yeager, the inventor-turned-outlaw who still hasn't realised how ridiculous his name is, and now sports an equally ridiculous haircut. Following the events of the previous film, all Transformers have now been declared criminals, and the Transformer Reaction Force has been set up to eradicate the alien robots. Only more are arriving on Earth every day, so Optimus Prime has travelled back to his home planet to confront his maker for answers. Yeager is protecting many of the surviving Autobots at his junk yard, but soon finds himself caught up in events when a strange alien talisman attaches itself to his arm from the ship of a dead Transformer. Giant horns have emerged from the ground in various locations throughout the world, and it all somehow ties into a tale going back to the time of King Arthur and Merlin (the latter played by a game Stanley Tucci). Decepticons want the talisman for some reason, and by this time I'd given up.
The first hour is spent trying to explain the plot to the audience, while the rest is spent exploring aimless sub-plots, one involving a tough orphan child living in the ruins of a previous battle, designed to appeal to the young crowd. Within the first twenty minutes, it shamelessly rips-off Game of Thrones and Stranger Things, TV shows of a quality Bay could only dream of creating. By the time Anthony Hopkins shows up to collect his pay cheque, you'll be too worn out to tolerate his bumbling, exposition-tool shtick. Bay isn't interested in correcting the mistakes he has been criticised for in the past: The Last Knight is custom-made to appease the audience who willingly pay to see this migraine-inducing nonsense every couple of years. Yet judging for the film's rather uninspiring box-office take, even they are getting tired of it. With the exception of 2007's sporadically enjoyable first film, this franchise has left me angry, outraged, depressed and physically sick, but never had I felt indifferent. The Last Knight left me feeling nothing at all, other than incredibly sleepy.
It feels like decades have passed since British writer/director Edgar Wright pulled away from Marvel's Ant-Man, apparently in fear of the studio's insistence on having the action take place within their Cinematic Universe and jeopardising his singular vision in the process. And it feels even longer since the underwhelming closure to the 'Cornetto Trilogy', 2013's The World's End, graced the big screen. But Wright has clearly been making the most of his spare time, finally completing the script for a movie that has been clattering around his head for over 20 years (he had the idea back in 1994). Drawing inspiration from a line in Simon & Garfunkel's song Baby Driver ("They call me baby driver, and once upon a pair of wheels," and a collection of his favourite petrol-head movies, he has delivered what is by far his most accomplished work to date.
Shortly before the release of Baby Driver, Wright hosted a film festival entitled 'Car Car Land' - a collection of his favourite car chase movies, featuring everything from William Friedkin's The French Connection to Walter Hill's The Driver. It has been quite rightly said that great cinematic action feels like a dance - elegant, brutal, and pieced together with delicate invention and skill. It is fitting that Wright named his festival after one of the finest musicals of recent times, La La Land. He has also taken this theory quite literally with Baby Driver, a movie as much at home with dazzling musical numbers as it is with high-speed pursuits and gun-fire, combining them beautifully without a hint of smugness. Our hero the getaway driver times his entire life to the beat ever-blasting into his ears from his loaded collection of iPods. A menial task such as making a sandwich becomes a toe-tapping dance number.
His name is Baby ("B-A-B-Y, Baby," as he confirms to practically everybody he meets), and his hipster blend of skinny jeans and sunglasses may have been grating without Ansel Elgort. Like Channing Tatum, his physicality and grace prevents you from taking your eyes off him once he starts to move, and cinematographer Bill Pope make sure to capture these moments in all their glory (including one terrific tracking shot at the start). Baby needs his music to block out the tinnitus constantly ringing in his ears, but also to remind him of the music-loving mother he lost in the very accident that caused his affliction. His short life has been spent in the debt of gangster Doc (Kevin Spacey), who employs the youngster's superhuman skills behind the wheel as a getaway driver for his ever-changing roster of low-life bank robbers. Each of them eye Baby with both curiosity and suspicion, when all he wants to do is pay off what he owes and leave town with adorable waitress Debora (Lily James). But one last job is never one last job.
Opening with a bank job that will leave you stunned at both the editing and choreography (no CGI is used), there's an early sense that Wight may have blown his load too early. But this only kicks off two hours in the hands of a craftsman who truly understand the mechanics of cinema. Not just action cinema, but musical and dramatic, and the film offers its fair share of belly laughs too. It's as much of an exaggerated world as Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, but contains itself in its own little world. The characters are larger-than-life but tangible, incredibly brought to life by the likes of Jamie Foxx, Jon Hamm, Eiza Gonzalez and Jon Bernthal. There's an almost ever-present soundtrack, with the characters speaking and moving in sync with the rhythm, which lend the film a unique energy. When the music stops and the soundtrack screeches to reflect Baby's tinnitus, we long to be thrown straight back into Wright's fantasy world. The car chases, the love story, the testosterone-fuelled exchanges - there's nothing new here, but Edgar Wright knows this. Baby Driver is so swaggeringly confident and stylishly hypnotic that it becomes a genre film like no other, causing most other action movies to hang their heads in shame.
While the eye-catching poster promises "Iron Hooked Fury!" and pitting a harpoon against a six-gun, the curiously forgotten B-movie western Terror in a Texas Town, directed by Joseph H. Lewis,is a positively downbeat little movie. Starting with a handsome, square-jawed hero walking into battle with a clad-in-black gunslinger, it appears at first glance that we are on familiar ground. But the film then flashes back, and all the western tropes we had been expecting are subtly subverted, similar in many ways to Nicholas Ray's groundbreaking masterpiece Johnny Guitar four years previous. The screenwriter is credited as Ben Perry - a name you'll likely be unfamiliar with. Yet this was in fact a front for Dalton Trumbo, the great Oscar-winning writer who was then under scrutiny from Senator McCarthy and blacklisted from Hollywood. With this knowledge, the oddness of Terror in a Texas Town suddenly makes sense.
In the - you guessed it - small Texas town of Prairie City, the hard-working farmers earning little from their land are struggling to fight off the advances of the unscrupulous land baron McNeil (Sebastian Cabot), who is using his wealth and influence to buy up the whole area for reasons not immediately clear. Some of the townsfolk are playing hard-ball, refusing to give their homes and livelihood to a man they never see. So McNeil brings in tough-as-nails gunslinger Johnny Crale (an outstanding Nedrick Young), a broken career-criminal who is happy to caress his pistol whenever a deal doesn't go his way. He murders Swede Sven Hansen (Ted Stanhope) when he refuses to sign a contract. A day later, his sailor son George (Sterling Hayden) arrives to greet the father he hasn't seen in over a decade, only the learn of his murder and that the land left to him is now the property of a greedy businessman.
It quickly becomes clear that the hero-versus-villain showdown the opening scene promised us will be nothing like we expected. The dashing American hero is in fact an immigrant without the skills of a quick-draw or the wits to take on McNeil on his own, and the black leather-donning Crale may just be in the midst of developing a conscience after years of killing and the loss of his gun hand. What makes Terror in a Texas Town so interesting is the way it merely hints at the two central characters' personalities and past, leaving these could-be archetypes as intriguing enigmas. Trumbo makes a point of highlighting the ranchers' ignorance of McNeil's Machiavellian role in the events, choosing instead to focus their hatred on the muscle. It isn't difficult to imagine that Trumbo's exile and unforgivable treatment at the hands of his own country didn't influence this apparently off-the-conveyor-belt B-picture. It has been unfairly forgotten by the decades, but Terror in a Texas Town is ripe for re-discovery as one of the strangest and most compelling westerns American has ever produced.
Steve Buscemi's first feature as director was Trees Lounge, an engaging drama about the bored, alcohol-drenched inhabitants of a small town, and their day-to-day interactions. For his second, Buscemi explores many of the same themes of aimlessness and having too much time on your hands, but changes the setting and tone entirely. Adapting Eddie Bunker's novel of the same name (the real-life ex-con also shares script writing duties with John Steppling), Animal Factory is about as unglamorous as prison drama gets. With a heightened sense of realism, violence and rape lurk at every turn, often happening so quickly that you barely have the chance to comprehend it. Buscemi and Bunker also find time to explore an engaging father-and-son relationship, albeit one taut with tension and distrust.
After receiving an incredibly harsh sentence for drug possession, young Ron Decker (Edward Furlong) is packed off to prison where his youthful looks quickly attracts unwanted attention. Proving himself to be completely ill-equipped to handle the danger he faces, he is taken in by the shaven-headed Earl Copen (Willem Dafoe), who teaches him the ropes and how to spot a threat. A man of little physical prowess, Earl has risen to a position of authority by using his background in law to improve the living and working standards of his fellow inmates. Surrounded by his gang of trusted bruisers (including Danny Trejo, Mark Boone Junior, and The Wire's Chris Bauer), Earl promises to protect the vulnerable Ron. Pondering Earl's true intentions, Ron at first keeps the smiling convict at arm's length, until a bond is formed that just may help the young offender to make it out alive.
By shaping the drama in the most unsensational way imaginable, Buscemi adds the necessary grit to Bunker's knowing words, with many of Bunker's novels taking inspiration from his own time in the slammer. Performances impress across the board, as you would expect from an ensemble taking direction from such a seasoned pro (who also appears). In particular, there are memorable roles for Mickey Rourke, playing Furlong's motor-mouthed, transvestite cell-mate, and, of all people, Tom Arnold, who is unnervingly convincing as a predatory rapist with his eye on Ron. But the film belongs to its two leads. Dafoe brings extra layers to his somewhat sensitive gang leader, and Furlong, one of many promising young actors who emerged in the 90s to disappear into the ether, is particularly effective as the protagonist. Changing his behaviour to suit his surroundings, we see the prison sculpt him into the type of career criminal the system's suppose to prevent. While the matter-of-fact approach prevents itfrom generating any real momentum - despite an attempted prison-break climax - Animal Factory is quietly powerful in small moments.
Cited by many critics as one of the best and most important American movies of the 1970s, Arthur Penn's Night Moves hasn't stood the test of time in terms of popularity. The legacy of the nouvelle vague in France had inspired a whole generation of American film-makers to try new things, and to subvert genres as much as the studios would allow them. This led to a re-emergence of the film noir, a genre stuck very much in the 1940s and 50s. With its chain-smoking, loose-skinned leading men and devilish, glamorous ladies, its tough demeanour is very much a product of the time. A couple of decades later, and filmmakers such as Roman Polanski, with Chinatown, and Robert Altman, with The Long Goodbye, found new ways to explore this dark world and its shady characters, and are widely remembered for it. But no film has been as successful at cutting to the heart of what drives these self-loathing deadbeats and the manipulating bombshells distracting them as Arthur Penn's Night Moves.
Private investigator and former American football star Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman) works freelance, preferring to gulp down coffees during long stakeouts on his own time than to be on the payroll of a larger agency. His wife Ellen (Susan Clark) tries to shake him out of his stubborn ways, but he's just an old-fashioned sort of guy. This lone wolf approach is in his blood, as after he turns down Ellen's invitation to the cinema, he monitors the situation anyway, discovering that his wife is having an affair in the process. Meanwhile, former actress Arlene Iverson (Janet Ward) hires Harry to track down her missing, promiscuous daughter Delly (Melanie Griffith). A conversation with mechanic Quentin (James Woods) leads Harry to a thrill-seeking movie stuntman, and then to the Florida Keys, where he discovers Delly hiding out with her stepfather Tom Iverson (John Crawford), and a striking woman named Paula (Jennifer Warren).
As a straight-forward detective story, Night Moves will likely divide an audience. With its unhurried approach and eagerness to explore Harry's troubled home-life and self-destructive behaviour, the jarring tones may not suit everybody's tastes. Night Moves is much more about the character than the case he is on. The movie mainly succeeds in this balancing act because of the performance of Gene Hackman, an actor working at the very top of his game. In the 70s, he was part of a group of actors who rebelled against Hollywood gloss, and portrayed real people in real situations. Harry is ultimately a good-hearted guy, tragically failing to see the irony when he demonstrates his knowledge of 'check mate' moves in chess to Paula, with sight of own possible fate in the unravelling mystery. As the plot moves on and Harry finds himself caught up in far more than he had bargained for, the revelations become increasingly confusing. But I didn't care: It's the kind of convolution warmly embraced by the Coen Brothers in neo-noirThe Big Lebowski. It isn't a masterpiece, but Night Moves deserves to be remembered as one of the most important American movies of its decade.
Ridley Scott's ambitious but ultimately flawed Prometheus attempted to somewhat distance itself from the Alien franchise, or at least the silly money-spinner it had become. While very much set within the Alien universe, Prometheus made a crack at some big themes, particularly man's obsession with meeting its maker, but ended up leaving us with far more questions than answers, with Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and the decapitated synthetic David (Michael Fassbender) leaving to find the Engineer's planet to find the answers to the very questions we are left with. After the success of the brilliant The Martian, Scott seems eager to get back into the familiar stalk-and-eat/impregnate routine of his genre re-defining Alien. Indeed, Alien: Covenant is a direct sequel to prequel Prometheus, but Scott seems more interested in straight-up horror than further exploring the deeper themes of its predecessor.
It's 11 years since the Prometheus expedition, and the spaceship Covenant is drifting through space on its way to a distant planet that its crew and passengers hope to colonise. Two thousand colonists lie in stasis, and only the crew are awoken when a stellar neutrino burst almost destroys the ship. As repairs go underway, they pick up a faint radio transmission from an uncharted planet, which sounds suspiciously like John Denver. Following the death of the ship's captain (played by James Franco, who appears for roughly 30 seconds), the newly-promoted Oram (Billy Crudup), against the wishes of second-in-command Daniels (Katherine Waterston), makes the decision to follow the signal in the hope of finding another habitable planet. When they touch down, they find an alien ship, a sea of extraterrestrial corpses, and the planet's seemingly lone inhabitant, the long-haired synthetic David. Soon enough, a couple of crew members become infected by alien spores, and the rest you already know.
1979's Alien, which still has the power to terrify, has little in way of plot or alien action. Its power comes from the simplicity in which its story unfolds, and the fantastic ensemble of actors bringing to life the human interaction between those brief moments of sheer menace. They talked about shitty working conditions and bad pay, and felt like actual people rather than just the clothes they wore. There was something fascinating about watching these blue-collar types, hundreds of years into the future, and seeing that we haven't changed one bit. In Alien: Covenant, characters are defined by the things they say about themselves or their accessories. One of the first things Oram reveals is that he is a man of faith, as if the audience is too stupid to work out for themselves that the story essentially represents humanity's search for God. Chief pilot Tennessee (Danny McBride) is a cowboy because he wears a cowboy hat and, well, his name is Tennessee. Daniels rocks a white vest and a tough, slightly sad demeanour, so we instantly think of Ripley without any actual character development required.
The film spends most of its time having the characters explain the plot to each other. At one point, a character proclaims that so little of what is happening makes sense, and I refuse to believe I'm the only one to spot the glaring irony in this statement. Characters are introduced and killed off before we had the chance to care about them, while most of the audience will still be trying to figure out how all this 'black goo' fits into the overarching story. Thank the Engineers then, for the presence of Michael Fassbender. He was the best thing in Prometheus, and it's no different here. Doubling as both the American-accented synthetic upgrade Walter and his unhinged, English-accented predecessor David, his scenes are the film's eeriest. Scenery is chewed, certainly, and there is a ridiculous, homo-erotically charged moment I won't spoil, but it's only during these moments that Covenant doesn't feel like a re-tread of every other Alien movie there's been, only done worse. Covenant's main problem is that it is trying to explain and expand on a mythos that doesn't require it. In Alien, the alien arrived without explanation and that was part of its appeal. It was a slimy, unpredictable unknown, and perhaps we now know too much.
Despite plummeting into a fiery furnace while carrying an unborn alien queen inside of her at the climax of David Fincher's messy-but-interesting Alien 3, Fox saw more money to be made in carrying on the franchise started by Ridley Scott back in 1979. For the fourth instalment, French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, hot off the success of The City of Lost Children, was brought in to inject some life in the stuttering series, bringing a unique aesthetic to the ongoing battle between us puny humans and the superior xenomorph. Sadly, this unique aesthetic is muted and ugly, perhaps even more so than the incredibly miserable Alien 3, and the European sense of humour and quirkiness Jeunet also brings to the table doesn't quite fit the tone of the Alien series. If this was a stand-alone, unconnected genre movie, Alien Resurrection may now be fondly remembered as an offbeat, cyberpunk oddity.
It's 200 years since Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Ripley sacrificed herself to finally rid the universe of the xenomorphs, but humanity's stupidity apparently hasn't wavered in that time. Ripley is cloned by some mad scientists from a single drop of blood, for the sole purpose of removing the queen inside of her (how the queen got inside her from the cloning process isn't quite explained), and turning its offspring into weapons and/or subjects of experimentation. She tells them, "she will breed, you will die," but naturally this falls on deaf ears. As the inevitable happens and the aliens free themselves from their cells, Ripley falls in with a rag-tag group of mercenaries. But Ripley is different; she can smell nearby aliens and seems to possess super-strength, and when she receives a jab to the face, her blood burns through the spaceship's floor. She clearly shares a bond and possibly DNA with her 'children', and the grizzled space pirates don't know whether they should trust her.
Alien Resurrection is the worst of the franchise for two reasons. One is that the film is so damn ugly. Aside from the wonderfully weird moment in which Ripley writhes in the slimy tentacles of her 'daughter', there isn't one shot that feels truly cinematic. The sets look expensive, certainly, but there's a TV-quality running throughout, backed-up by a pre-Buffy the Vampire Slayer show Joss Whedon script, which often feels like a precursor to the wonderful Firefly. The second is the casting of Winona Ryder as daughter-figure Call. Ryder is a terrific actress, but every line she utters here is without conviction. She stands out like a sore thumb when sharing scenes with such reliable character actors as Ron Perlman, Michael Wincott, Dominique Pinon, Dan Hedaya and Brad Dourif. Jeunet amps up the gore factor, which is something the Alien series was never about, and neglects suspense and terror in the process. The climax is weird and disgusting, and may have been delightfully bonkers if this was unshackled by a franchise tag and was the director's way of letting loose with a generous budget. But this isn't the Alien I know and love.
It's incredibly sad to read about how many milestones Wonder Woman touches on, especially in this day and age where a high-profile Twitter user must consider every message they post to the world in fear of being racist, sexist, homophobic, or just plain insensitive. Despite the influx of superhero movies since Marvel kicked off their Cinematic Universe in 2008 with Iron Man, and despite the abundance of long-standing and hugely popular female superheroes existing in the comics, and despite audiences calling out for a female-led superhero film ever since Scarlett Johansson donned the leathers as Black Widow in Iron Man 2, studios have failed to deliver one in 12 years. Perhaps the studios were scared they would have another Elektra on their hands, but that movie failed because it was terrible, and was a spin-off from the also-terrible Daredevil.
The DC Extended Universe, in the face of the critical mauling they received last year with the double-whammy of Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad, can only be applauded for taking the much-overdue 'risk' of launching a female-led franchise with Wonder Woman, a movie that not only represents so much in terms of moving cinema out of a stone-age mentality and into the modern world, but surpasses all expectations in a time of superhero overkill. Wonder Woman is, above all, charming, funny and exciting, and will hopefully help steer the DCEU back on track after an incredibly wobbly start. Making her introduction in Batman v Superman and emerging as one of the few positive things to be said about Zack Snyder's overblown and poorly-constructed smack-down, Wonder Woman begins in the present day but flashes back to the time glimpsed in the black-and-white photograph sent to her by Ben Affleck's Batman, when World War I was in full flow and her heart was won by a spy named Steve.
The young Diana grows up on the island of Themyscira, a beautiful hidden paradise created by Zeus to be a home for the Amazons, a tribe of fierce female warriors tasked with protecting the world from the Greek God's evil, warmongering brother Ares. Diana's mother, Queen Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen), attempts to shield her from the horrors of war and forbids her to practice combat, while her auntie Anitope (Robin Wright) realises her potential and trains her in secret. Zeus left the islanders a gift, a weapon called the 'Godkiller', which will prove decisive when the battle with Ares finally stirs. Cue the arrival of Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), an Allied spy who stumbles on the island while fleeing the Germans. He brings death and war with him, and the Amazons want to kill him before Diana intervenes, revealing he saved her life. The tribe want nothing to do with a war waged by man, but Diana suspects Ares may be puppet-master behind the conflict that has taken millions of lives. Against her mother's wishes, she travels with Steve to London, where he reveals to his superiors German plans to release a devastating new mustard gas created by General Ludendroff (Danny Huston) and Spanish chemist Dr. Maru (Elena Anaya).
The word 'man' carries a special significance, and director Patty Jenkins carefully weaves this idea into the film without rubbing it in your face. As well as the violent, dangerous 'world of men' lurking across the waters, there is also No Man's Land, the stretch of mud and rubble separating the two warring fronts. This is a place that no man can hope to survive, and this sets up the triumphant moment seen in the trailers in which Diana deflects machine-gun fire with her bracelets and shield before taking out anybody daft enough to stand in her way. This scene is made all the more powerful by Gal Gadot, who puts in a terrific performance despite her lack of acting experience and puts all the doubters to rest, proving to be just as savvy with comedy as the action. The fact that we care so much about her also means that the CGI-heavy climax, which seems to be trend with DC, can almost be forgiven. Thanks to well-written character development and some charming chemistry between Gadot and the ever-brilliant Chris Pine, there is a real emotional investment that was lacking in DC's previous misfires. In terms of origin stories, this doesn't rewrite the rule-book, but the importance and significance of Wonder Woman should not be underestimated.
Guy Ritchie may just one of the luckiest film directors in history. After making his name with Cockney gangster movies Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, he released a double-bill of stinkers so bad that even the utterance of their titles provokes sniggers. Swept Away and Revolver almost killed the career of the Brit before it truly took off, with his highly publicised relationship to Madonna proving far more interesting to the tabloids than any of his desperate output. He returned to his roots with RocknRolla, a motor-mouthed crime comedy which, although sitting well within his comfort zone, was good enough to remind us of why we liked him in the first place. Since then, he's found big-budget success with the Sherlock Holmes films and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (although the latter tanked at the box-office, it was generally warmly received by those who saw it), and has been handed the keys to his very own franchise, the eternally rebootable story of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table.
It's unclear just how much more input Ritchie will have on this new take on Arthurian legend, as he has just started production on Disney's live-action remake of Aladdin, starring Will Smith as the genie. That, combined with the box-office failure of King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, would surely suggest that this series was dead on arrival, or at least will see it taken in a new direction by Warner Bros., who had been trying to get something off the ground ever since the more grounded 2004 version starring Clive Owen. If this is true, then thank the cinema gods, as this annoying, sickly and exposition-heavy turkey was never going to interest a new generation of cinema-goers in a legend that has fascinated many for years. It trips up during its very first moments, as giant, CGI elephants knock down CGI buildings and send CGI people to their death, removing all the elements that make this old-fashioned myth so endearing by employing a contemporary attitude. Haircuts, fashion and dialogue all fit Ritchie's lad's mag aesthetic.
Everything needs to be big and shiny, and King Arthur opens with a set-piece most movies would choose to climax with. King Uther Pendragon (Eric Bana) is locked in a war with warlock Mordred and an army of mages, with the kingdom of Camelot under threat from their magic. Assisted by his magical sword Excalibur, the King triumphs, only to be betrayed by his evil, pampered brother Vortigern (Jude Law), who arranges a coup to usurp the throne. Only Uther's son Arthur escapes with his life, pushed down a river to be raised by prostitutes in, as you would guess from a Ritchie film, Londinium. He grows up to look like Charlie Hunnam and practises hand-to-hand combat. He also dabbles in petty theft with a small gang of cheeky chappies while unaware of his true heritage. When Uther's sword reappears stuck in a rock near the castle's ground, Vortigern rounds up all the men in the nearby areas to attempt to pull it free. He who succeeds is the true heir to the throne, and therefore destined for the chopping block.
This all sounds like a classic hero's journey set within the medieval fantasy genre, but Ritchie is so intent of shoving modern-day sensibilities down your throat that it's easy to quickly forget the true essence of the story. There are endless visual gags involving a story narrated in the present while we flash back to the actual event, a gimmick employed by Ritchie many times before (but was done far better in Ant-Man), and an abundance of camera-swirling action scenes that resemble a video game cutaway scene. At times, it is the cinematic equivalent of that G-force ride at the fairground, in that you cling to whatever you can and hope it ends before you vomit. At the centre of it all is Hunnam, who follows his turn in Pacific Rim with another charisma-free performance. He is drawn as a tough- working-class hero who would be more comfortable in a pub brawl than ruling a country, but comes across as the kind of meat head seen on a night out starting fights while others insist he's a good guy really. A dick head with a magical sword and royal blood is still a dick head. Many of its flaws could be forgiven were it not such a massive bore. Instead, this will likely induce a headache more than any sense of wonder.
After the overwhelming success of James Cameron's follow-up to Ridley Scott's creature feature classic Alien, the direction in which the franchise could go from there was a mystery. Surprisingly, 20th Century Fox made the risky move of hiring an untried director who had made a name for himself in music videos, but didn't have a feature to his name. That man was David Fincher, and the experience almost turned him off movies for good. Frustrated by studio interference, constant script rewrites and budget issues, Fincher turned his back on the film once it hit the editing room, and has since disowned the film completely. The result was a box-office disappointment which received mostly negative reviews, possibly the result of an unyielding, miserable tone, or the fact that the final product was stitched together from scenes shot during an incredibly problematic production.
Even in a series that includes Alien: Resurrection and Prometheus, Alien 3 is still very much the dark horse of the bunch. Fans mostly loathe the film, but there are some who believe the film to be some sort of unrealised masterpiece. After all, this was made by the director who would go on to helm Se7en, Fight Club and Gone Girl, although you would never guess it. I sit somewhere in between. 2003's 'Assembly Line' cut (which Fincher refused to take part in) establishes some much-needed coherency, bulking up the role of Paul McGann's character and introducing more fluidity to the story. The new cut certainly doesn't cover up the movie's main issues, but it is a refreshingly downbeat spectacle, reasserting the alien's genetic superiority and terrifying prowess after Cameron's entry blew a small army of them away in spectacular fashion. There are also some terrific performances by a mainly British cast.
Alien 3 didn't do itself any favours by killing off fan favourites Hicks (Michael Biehn) and Newt (Carrie Henn) during the very first scene. After narrowly escaping with their lives following the events of Aliens, an alien egg inexplicably found itself on board their ship, hatching while the crew slept in stasis. An escape pod containing Hicks, Newt, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and the mangled android Bishop (Lance Henriksen) is launched when a fire starts on board, eventually landing on 'Fury' 161, a penal colony and lead-smelting works housing sex offenders and murderers of the worst kind. Led by the imposing Dillon (Charles S. Dutton), the inmates have also turned to God. They are all bar-coded and shaven-headed due to a lice infestation, and look like they haven't seen the sun in years. Ripley, the only survivor, confides in prison doctor Clemens (Charles Dance), who is willing to perform an autopsy on the dead to ensure no alien lives inside of them. He also displays a bar-code.
Of course, it isn't long until another alien has hatched and is hunting down any poor sap in its way, as it seeks to reproduce and overrun. Writers David Giler, Walter Hill and Larry Ferguson made the correct choice in returning to the series' routes with a lone alien stalking its prey. Cameron went bigger, but you can't really go any bigger than that. Fincher stages some scary set-pieces, particularly one involving a terrified Paul McGann and very close encounter for Ripley. The main issue lies in between these moments, with the film too busy establishing the new setting, introducing an all-new cast of characters, and bridging the gap between the end of the second movie and the beginning of this to gather any real momentum. Fury 161 is also a horrible place to spend over two hours in, especially with the threat of rape and murder at every turn. With the Assembly Cut now the definitive version, Alien 3 is certainly not the complete mess it is still considered to be by many. It's rough and ugly, yes, but this arguably adds more grit and ferocity to the terror. It's hard to think of what could have been had Fox realised the talent they had on their hands.
It has been said that when it comes to cinema, there is no such thing as bad publicity. Controversy can spread word-of-mouth and natural curiosity faster than most ad campaigns, propelling a film that may have flown under most people's radar to surprise success and welcome notoriety. This isn't always the case however, as Deborah Kampmeier's Hounddog proves. Following a screening at the Sundance Film Festival, the film faced protests for a scene in which Dakota Fanning's character is raped (she was 12 at the time of filming). Hounddog went onto to be a critical and box-office failure, and has since faded into obscurity. In fact, the gut-wrenching power of the hard-to-watch rape scene and the performance of Fanning are the only good things to be said about this slow-moving and cliche-ridden drama.
It's the late 1950's. Lewellen (Fanning) is a precocious young girl living in rural Alabama with her deadbeat dad (David Morse), and next door to her religious disciplinarian grandmother (Piper Laurie). She spends most of her spare time performing awful renditions of her favourite Elvis Presley songs, or down at the local watering hole with her friend Buddy (Cody Hanford). The two share the odd kiss and inspect each other's private parts with fascination. We're told that Daddy is abusive, and clearly gets violent with his new girlfriend (listed as 'Stranger Lady' in the credits and played by Robin Wright). However, he is struck by lightning one night and reduced to a simpleton, becoming reliant on his tom-boy daughter and terrified she will abandon him. Lewellen's main concern is nabbing tickets for Elvis's visit to town, until a horrific attack turns her world upside down.
In an attempt to capture Lewellen's poverty and the general barrenness of the Deep South setting, Kampmeier has pasted together images of rusty, decrepit vehicles parked on overgrown lawns and damp, sweaty interiors, combined with the constant chirping of crickets. It's beautifully filmed, but this kind of imagery has been used countless times before. It often feels like a foreigner's idea of Alabama, all string vests, small-town ignorance and God-fearing. You wait for the story to kick into gear, but it never does. Instead, the film seems to revel in putting Lewellen through one horrible experience after another, with seemingly no point. She seeks guidance from local snake-catcher Charles (Afemo Omilami), who teaches the girl about the blues which inspired Elvis, and the two share a few scenes in which he comes across as the cliched wise black man. Hounddog is terrible on almost every level, but thank God for Fanning, who even outshines seasoned veterans like Morse and Wright.
French Cancan is filmed deliberately to evoke the paintings of the great Impressionist painters, including Renoir's own father, Pierre-Auguste. Set in 1980s Paris, this is the (fictional) origin of the Moulin Rouge, and, like Baz Luhrmann's spectacular Moulin Rouge! released 46 years later, the tale is told with elements of fantasy and lashings of colour. With his failing cafe about to fall in the hands of the creditors, the womanising Henri Danglard (Jean Gabin) hatches a plan whilst out one night in Montmartre with his rich colleagues and belly-dancing mistress Lola (Maria Felix). He will bring back the cancan, re-naming it the 'French Cancan' in order to sound more exotic to visiting Russian and American sailors. He eyes the beautiful Nini (Francoise Arnoul) and offers to pay for her to have dance lessons, enraging her jealous boyfriend. With chaos growing all around him, Danglard calmly tries to hold it all together in time for the big opening night.
